The Big Green Heist: The largest, most expensive and deceptive case of crony capitalism in American history…

Monday, November 5, 2012

Busting Open Obama Energy Department's Den of Deception

Benghazi isn’t the only White House cover up being exposed through
leaked emails. State Department staffers aren’t the only career
officials being blamed for President Obama’s inexperience, questionable
judgment, and obvious cover up. A similar saga has just been exposed in
the latest chapter of the green-energy crony-corruption scandal.

On October 30, The Daily Caller ran a feature titled: As many as fifty Obama backed green energy companies bankrupt or troubled.
The piece cited the work Christine Lakatos and I did in our three-part
“green-energy failures” series released in October. Immensely popular,
the DC article was picked up by numerous sites, including Fox Nation and GOPUSA.
That night, Newt Gingrich was on Fox News’ On the Record with Greta Van
Sustren. After discussing the incriminating Benghazi emails, he pointed
to another possible “October surprise.”

Gingrich teased: “The other big story, I think, that is going to
break, is on corruption and extraordinary waste in the solar-power
grants and direct involvement by the Obama White House, including the
President, in the solar-panel grants involving billions of dollars, and I
suspect that’s going to break Wednesday and Thursday of this week.”

His sources were dead on. The next day, Wednesday, October 31, at
1:30PM ET, we received a tip regarding the House Committee on Oversight
and Government Reform’s release of more than 150 mails, equaling hundreds of pages of convicting evidence, accompanied by a five-page “Memorandum”
with the following subject line: “Update on Committee’s Oversight of
the DOE Loan Guarantee Program: New Emails Show President Obama, Senior
Administration Officials Misled American People about Role of President
and White House in Program.”

Through the research and writing we’ve done, Lakatos and I were
confident that there was direct involvement, after all, of the 26 loans
(of which the majority were "junk" rated) issued through just the 1705 Loan Guarantee Program to 21
firms, virtually all of them had meaningful political ties (bundlers,
donors, supporters, etc.,) to the White House and other high-ranking
Democrats. Even the Government Accountabilty Office (GAO) had addressed many areas of concern within the DOEin 2010, they declaring,
"[loan] applicants were treated inconsistently," with favoritism at
play.

Despite the obvious connection, President Obama has
repeatedly denied any involvement. As it has done with Benghazi-gate,
the White House, this time through Senior Advisor David Plouffe, while
on Meet the Press (October 30, 2011), shuns responsibility for something
politically uncomfortable: “decisions about the loan program were made
by career officials in the Department of Energy on the merits.”

Likewise, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, while testifying
before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in November of 2011,
stuck to the talking points when, referencing the Solyndra debacle,
under oath, he said: “I am aware of no communication from the White
House to the Department of Energy saying to make the loan or to
restructure.” More recently, March 2012, before the House Oversight
Committee, Chu claimed: “we looked at the loans on their own merits.” At
that same hearing, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), pressed Secretary Chu on
nine of the firms that received loans, revealing their political
connections. Chu countered that the loans were based on “merit.” Yet
Jordan was perplexed, “so if you weren’t helping your buddies, and you
were basing your decisions on the merits of the loan, how do you explain
the fact that 23 of 27 recipients of the loan guarantees were rated as
junk status investments?” Jordan concluded, “If it wasn’t your political buddies, it had to be incompetence.”

In a September 2011 House Energy and Commerce Committee on Oversight hearing on Solyndra, Jonathan Silver was asked if he had communications with the White House over Solyndra (both the DOE loan and restructuring time periods). While Silver stuttered quite a bit in his attempt to deal with this line of questioning, he never answered the question. Yet Silver and Jeffrey Zeintz (Deputy Director at OMB) had to be reminded that they were under oath. Then Zeintz said he "does interact with components of the White House" including Carol Browner. Browner was part of President Obama's Green Team (a team that I had on my "green corrupption radar" back in 2010) –– top energy and environmental adviser, who left her Climate Czarpost in early 2011.

Also under oath, in the July 18, 2012, Oversight Hearing specifically addressing Abound Solar (now bankrupt and under investigation
for securities fraud, consumer fraud and financial misrepresentation),
former Executive Director of the Loan Program Office (LPO), Silver
stated, “Because I am no longer at the department, I do not have access
to the analysis done for the Abound project. As a result, I cannot
comment in detail about the transaction, but what I can do however, is
give you a flavor for what we try to do on this, and every project…The
loan would have gone through multiple reviews independent of the loan
program’s office, including detailed reviews by career credit
professionals at DOE, and career staff at OMB, Treasury, and the
National Economic Council.”

Silver then emphatically informed the Committee, “This loan––like all the loans
underwritten by career professionals, supported by outside specialists
–– it was reviewed by career professionals from multiple executive
branch offices.” “It was not rushed, the review took place over several
years.” “It was not given to friends –– indeed no one in the Loan
Program had any idea what individuals were involved in this [Abound] or
any other transaction, nor did we care.” The questioning continued.
Silver was asked if he saw any evidence of pay-to-play during his
tenure. Silver’s response: “None whatsoever, sir—as I say, almost nobody
that I am aware of in the Loan Program even knew who the individuals
were who had invested, either directly or indirectly, into these
companies.”

During the October 11 Vice Presidential debate, when Paul Ryan challenged him on the oversight of the “$90 billion in green pork to campaign contributors,” Vice President Biden
sang the same tune: “His colleague runs an investigative committee,
spent months and months and months going into this. Months and months.
They found no evidence of cronyism.”

Just last week, October 26, 2012, President Obama continued the ruse, when he told a Denver, Colorado news anchor
that decisions made in the loan program office are “decisions, by the
way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do
with politics.”

Clearly the stories were coordinated, and were contrary to the
obvious conclusions a thinking person would draw—which prompted the
Oversight Committee to probe further. However, until the leaked emails
were made public on Thursday, we had no proof. We needed the smoking
gun.

The tale-tellers, at the least, “misled the American people,” behaved unethically, and may well be guilty of perjury.

Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy

The emails revealed that Secretary Chu may well have perjured
himself—though as Jordan implied, he may just be incompetent. We’ve written extensively
on the interaction of decision-makers in the Administration and its
“buddies.” In the March 2012 hearing, Jordan asked specifically: “Did
the White House call you about, talk to you about any of these…did
someone from the White House talk to you, the Chief of Staff, someone
from the White House, talk to you about these respective companies,
involving these individuals?”

Our research
shows involvement of then-White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley in the
BrightSource loan—one of the projects Jordan was asking about.

The new emails show Chu personally issued orders to prioritize a project favored by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer—Unistar.

Email #13 shows that Silver wrote to Chu’s Chief of Staff in a December 10, 2010, email: “since Aldy [White House
staff Joe Aldy] personally promised the edf management group [one of
the sponsors of the Unistar loan guarantee project] that he would lead
an interagency review of this topic, we should tell him that he should
be the one to call and deliver the news.”

Email #14: “there has been a commitment from S1 [Secretary Chu] to Steny Hoyer on this.”

Email #15: “Just came down from the Secretary’s office. He is adamant that this transaction is going to OMB by the end of the day.”

LPO Credit Advisor Jim McCrea (possibly the source of this massive
email leak, as his name is one of the most consistent in the email
text), had hesitation about the project, stating in Email #16: “Ordinarily,
over an issue like this, I would refuse to sign the credit paper and
refuse to send it to OMB tomorrow but given the direct order I was
personally given by S1[Secretary Chu]…”

Didn’t someone say the loans were not politically motivated and were
based solely on merit? Oh, yes, it was the President who said: “they
have nothing to do with politics.”

Jonathan Silver, Former Executive Director of the Loan Program Office

Silver (reported to be an Obama bundler and Democratic donor) was a frequentWhite House visitor (over 70 times during his time at the DOE), and was even questioined over his "shady" email practices, resigned in early October 2011, amidst the Solyndra scandal. His claim
that loan reviews took place over “several years” and that loans were
not “given to friends” is perjurious.

First, the loans couldn’t have been reviewed over “several years.”
Obama wasn’t President until January 2009. The Stimulus funds were made
available in February 2009. And, the Solyndra $528 million loan guarantee (September 2009) was the Obama administration’s first, as part of the 2009 stimulus package. Solyndra was also the first company to go bankruptin September 2011. Clearly, there was no “several years” in there.

While logic and simple math tell us that the loans were not reviewed
over “several years,” the emails prove the rushed process. In the 350+
page Appendix II,
the very first email is from McCrea to Silver (dated June 15, 2010)—subject line: 28 day
clock. In it he complains about things being rushed. He opens with “I do
not have a good sense of why the DOE and OMB agreed to a 28 day clock following Solyndra...”
Though by the end of the page-long email, McCrea seems to concede: “I
am not sure that the 28 day process is really as much of a constraint as
it might appear at first glance.”

Again, we covered Silver’s involvement with many key players including John Woolard, CEO of BrightSource Energy. Silver is very well connected,
having served in the Clinton Administration, he parties with Al Gore,
was a frequent White House visitor and participated in meetings with
Chief of Staff Bill Daley. Silver used his personal email account to
conduct DOE business. But there is no hard proof there.The following eight paragraphs is a revision from our original post with additional information:

Also found in Appendix II, early on (December 2009), way before the DOE finalized the $1.6 billion loan guarantee for BrightSource Energy (April 2011), we find that there was a strong push by Silver and others inside and close to the energy department in getting this loan approved .

We find a very suspicious email exchange about BrightSource that included CEO Woolard, Joshua Bar-Lev, Vice President, Regulatory Affairs for BrightSource, and the lobbying firm representing BrightSource, McBee Strategic Consulting –– as well as some unknown "energy-Democrat-tied participants":

We discovered that in 2009, Steve McBee alerted the masses with the following...

"Wanted to let you know that the BrightSource application appears to moving apace at OMB and has a fighting chance of getting over to DOE..." "DOE is another story. We are hearing that despite a strong push by Silver, Spinner, Rogers and others internally, the process is getting sideways by any number of bureaucratic hold ups and there is now real potential for consideration of the project to slip until next year...[or"redeployed to China]" "ANYTHING you guys would be willing to do with DOE in terms of moving the process would be deeply appreciated."

Joshua Bar-Lev in response says, "Do you all think we should have vantage point insist on mtg with chu or silver or rodgers? Should John and I try to fly out for something similar? Looking for some game changer but perhaps we’ve done all we could. Is dc shut down by the snow or is there some impact we could make? Joshua"

NOTE: We've covered Silver, Steve Spinner and Matt Rogers (all former DOE advisors) in previous posts, as well as Silver's "shady email practices." The “DOE Insiders," where plenty of “VC Guys”
and “Gore Acolytes” held key positions –– a dozen on my radar, where
at least a dozen on the "green corruption" radar, including these three.

Time out for a minute...as noted during Silver's testimony this past July, he made this denial:
“...as I say, almost nobody that I am aware of in the Loan Program even
knew who the individuals were who had invested, either directly or
indirectly into these companies.”

So the question remains, if Silver nor anyone else knew, why would anyone seek help from Vantage Point? Who knows? But what we do know is that Vantage Point Partners is the majority stakeholder in BrightSource, and Sanjay Wagle was a principle. Wagle just so happens to be the “renewable energy grants adviser” at the DOE under Secretary Chu.

While we know that Silver had cozy relationships with quite a few of
those seeking green-energy funding (like Al Gore and Woolard), the following emails confirm that lobbying
the White House and the Vice President’s office achieves results, not
only with getting a loan approved, but clearing obstacles with the
Department of Interior (DOI) that put their entire billion-dollar
project at risk.

Email #5, drafted by Bright Source CEO John Woolard for then-Board
Chairman John Bryson to send to then-White House Chief of Staff Bill
Daley: “This project is now at significant risk due to delays in
permitting at the Department of Interior…”

Email #6, from Wollard stated: “we are making good progress in DC.
Whitehouse [sic] does seem to be very focused on this issue, in fact it
is being elevated through the office of political affairs as well as VP
Bidens- so we are starting to get them focused on the massive political
risk- it helps that Bloomberg called Ivanpah ‘Obama’s energy project’ so
it does have their attention.”

Email #7, two weeks later, BrightSource got what it wanted: “The U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service issued their revised Biological Opinion, prompting
the Bureau of Land Management to issue a new notice to proceed allowing
continued construction at Ivanpah units 2 and 3.”

The BrightSource case reeks of political connections, yet we are
supposed to believe the loans “had nothing to do with politics.”

Joe Biden, Vice President

Biden’s denial comes from his one debate of this campaign season, about which Diana Furchtgott-Roth writes for Real Clear Markets:
“In Thursday's vice presidential debate, Joe Biden denied any
‘cronyism’ in the award of Energy Department grants and loan guarantees
to encourage the development of renewable energy. Plus, he asserted that
government-assisted green energy projects had a better ‘batting
average’ than do projects backed by investment bankers. Just one
problem: Neither of Biden's assertions was true. Plus, the Vice
President himself had a role in the cronyism.”

Email #6, proves her point: “…It is being elevated through the office of political affairs as well as VP Bidens…”

Then there is Email #4: “Pressure is on real heavy on SF [Shepherds Flat] due to interest from VP.”Additionally, as we addressed, though not revealed in the emails,
Bernie Toon, who served then-Senator Biden as his Chief of Staff, became a lobbyist for BrightSource Energy.

The White House and President Barack Obama

President Obama did keep himself somewhat isolated—having made fewer
denials and being involved in fewer emails, however, he cannot be
omitted from the discussion, as he was clearly party to the loan
approvals. Plus, the emails show that DOE officials were pressured by
the political interests at stake.

Email #1, from McCrea to Silver: “I am growing increasingly worried
about a fast track process imposed on us at the POTUS level based on
this chaotic process that we are undergoing…by designing the fast track
process and having it approved at the POTUS level (which is an absolute
waste of his time!) it legitimizes every element and it becomes embedded
like the 55% recovery rate which also was imposed by POTUS.”

Email #2, from David Schmitzer, DOE LPO Director of Loan Origination to
McCrea: “Jonathan just said at our staff meeting that, opposite the
message received on Thursday, AREVA is now a ‘go” (seems on Friday POTUS
himself approved moving it ahead).”

Email #3, from Silver to McCrea, encouraging him to remind a Treasury
official of White House interest in now bankrupt Abound Solar: “You
better let him know that WH wants to move Abound forward. Policy will
have to wait unless they have a specific policy problem with abound.”

Despite Obama’s claim that the decisions regarding the loans had
“nothing to do with politics,” it is clear that they had everything to
do with politics—and not just his own. Loans were used to bolster Senator Reid’s re-election chances in the tight 2010 race.

Email #8, McCrea wrote: “Since this is not going to go into the DOE,
and just to be clear, the translation is: Reid may be desperate. WH may
want to help. Short term considerations may be more important than
longer term considerations and what’s a billion anyhow?”

Email #9, Silver wrote: “I need some stats on how many projects we have
funded or have in DD [due diligence] as a percentage of totals. Reid is
constantly hit at home for not bringing in the federal dollars.”

If all of this were a novel, or better yet a dramatic feature film,
we’d find it most entertaining. We’d leave the theater shaking our heads
at the gall of the movie’s starring actor. Instead, this full-color
story (White House, green energy, Silver connections) leads to red ink—money borrowed from China that the US taxpayer will be paying back for generations.

The coercion, corruption, cronyism and, cover up of the President's
pet projects is really a horror flick, after all, the emails were
released on Halloween. Each one of us is a victim of an expensive trick.

Article first presented at Townhall.com written by columnist Marita K. Noon, Busting Open Energy's Den of Deception, November 4, 2012 –– as a follow up to our BREAKING this story on October 31, 2012:

1 comment:

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April 17, 2016: Found on the DRUDGE REPORT... Kind of

2015: Christine in DC, Hanging with President Lincoln

TWITTER

The Mission: FOLLOW THE MONEY (The Green Cash)

The Big Green Heist

It all began in late 2009 when Christine Lakatos was hired to contribute to the political book, Killing Wealth, Freeing Wealth How to Save America’s Economy and Your Own, that was authored by Lee Troxler and Floyd Brown and released May 2010.

Alarmingly, our environment has been hijacked by uber-rich individuals, crooked politicians, and an assortment of left wing extremists who are fueled by greed and power attached to a radical agenda to bring about “global governance,” “redistribute the wealth,” and put the progressive movement –– big government, social justice and the death of capitalism –– on the fast track. Under the guise of “saving the planet,” these players, who are all interconnected in a variety of ways, are transforming our climate into something more sinister –– a scam of epic proportions.

Since that time, we've unearthed THE BIG GREEN HEIST (green energy movement / climate change hysteria), which is costing U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, is all about about Power and Profit –– NOT "Saving the Planet."

Please review the side panel for "sightings" of this intense and important work...-cCitizen Investigative Journalist

2012: Marita Noon and Christine Lakatos: On the Air exposing...

Marita Noon: Green-Energy Crony-Corruption Scandal...

April 2016: The GCF listed at

EcoFascism

Environmentalism is Fascism

The Online Enviro-critical Community

By William Kay

Enviro-Critical and/or Climate-Sceptical Websites

(About this List)

Dozens of the website producers have hard copy books on the market and several websites are entirely devoted to advertising recently published books. Presumably all bloggers would welcome greater success in the conventional publishing and media realms, but obscure sites such as Green Corruption Files and No Tricks Zone often make for the most interesting reading.

May 27, 2013: @ the EU Times

May 25, 2013: @ American Free Press –– Noon and Lakatos Interview

February 15, 2013: Cited @ Townhall.com

Report: Frickin’ Fracking Could Ruin Everything for Leftist Activists / by John Ransom,

February 2013: Also found @ The Heartland Institute

Wall Street Walks on the White House / by Marita Noon

January 6, 2013: @ FrontPageMag.com (August 2012 Abengoa Research)

Top Dem Steered $150 Million in Govt Loans to Spanish Company / By Daniel Greenfield

December 2012: Found Inside The Limbaugh Letter

December 2012 Issue / Page 14

Rush Limbaugh "The Other Obama Scandals"

Green Corruption Inside

December 2012 Issue

Green Graft:

Fifty failures, Green Corruption blog lists a total of 50 Obama green-energy busts: 23 bankrupt and 27 teetering. As of 10/23/12, at least $15 billion in "green" taxpayer money is either going or gone, most funneled to Obama Democrat cronies.

November 13, 2012: GCF at Patch Media

"Why I'm Breaking Up With Wegmans," By Laura Freed

November 6, 2012 @ Natural News

Widespread bankruptcy of Obama-backed green energy companies continues as state of economy worsens

October 16, 2012: @ Real Clear Energy

July 23, 2012: Cited by PJ Media

April 2012: Green Corruption: Department of Energy “Junk Loans” and Cronyism, Part One

"Extraordinary in-depth expose' of the incredible extent of the green energy scandal. It goes so far beyond Solyndra that you'll be shocked." April 26, 2012 Dave Nalle, Chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus; Edior at Blogcritics Magazine

Green Corruption started in the summer of 2010...

...since late 2009, we've been following the green energy money, and while this blog was launched in 2012, I began unleashing my findings in the summer of 2010.

Alarmingly, our environment has been hijacked by uber-rich individuals, crooked politicians, and an assortment of left wing extremists who are fueled by greed and power attached to a radical agenda to bring about "global governance," “redistribute the wealth,” and put the progressive movement –– big government, social justice and the death of capitalism –– on the fast track. Under the guise of “saving the planet,” these players, who are all interconnected in a variety of ways, are transforming our climate into something more sinister –– a scam of epic proportions.

April 2012: Lakatos: The Obama “Green” Corruption—Dollar by Dollar

"Finally, someone has done the job of itemizing the massive transfer of your taxes to Obama cronies, donors and Democrat party supporters. Now that we can see it, we find most of the firms that received tax dollars were poor investments BEFORE the money was given them. For example:

March 31, 2012: The Daily Caller Excerpt...

Even more damning allegations, which suggest that former Obama administration officials and campaign bundlers received a sizable share of those federal funds, are now surfacing.

Christine Lakatos, a researcher and conservative writer who has followed the emerging scandals for several years at the blog Green Corruption, told TheDC the administration is engaging in “crony capitalism with ‘green’ dollars.”

Lakatos claimed the scandal goes deeper than Rep. Issa and his investigators have detected. She said companies linked to contribution “bundlers” from President Obama’s 2008 campaign received about 80 percent of the “green energy” loans made by the Energy Department during the last three years.

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About Me

I am THE Green Corruption Blogger-- check it.
I'm a Christian, mother of two awesome daughters, a Conservative, and I love animals. My REAL job is fitness expert, and I have a self-published diet book for women and young girls called My Diva Diet, and I'm in the process of developing the Super Fit KIDS USA Cartoon.
Lastly, I'm a retired bodybuilder and fitness competitor, and back in 1990 I was a contender on American Gladiators, and I have the YouTube clip to prove it -- By A Hair